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Monday 15 February 2021
WORST SNOWFALL IN 50+ YEARS HITS MOSCOW, MANITOBA SETS 20 NEW COLD RECORDS ON SATURDAY ALONE (IN BOOKS DATING BACK TO 1879), AND CARS HAVE BEEN BURIED UNDER SNOWDRIFTS IN BRITAIN
Record cold and snow has buffeted much of the Northern Hemisphere of late: from northern Asia, to the majority of Europe, to practically ALL of North America — the NH is suffering a truly historic winter of 2020/21 as the Grand Solar Minimum intensifies.
At a time when Solar Cycle 25 should be “ramping-up” the Sun has instead been eerily quiet — it has been “blank” (devoid of sunspots) for the past 11 consecutive days now (as of Mon, Feb. 15) which makes for 28 spotless days in 2021, or 61%.
The sun is blank–no sunspots (Feb. 15). Credit: SDO/HMI
Moscow has been hit with the worst snowstorm in decades, with freak weather disrupting air travel and bringing traffic to a halt, reports rt.com.
The flakes began settling on the Russian capital and its wider metropolitan area on Friday, and continued falling for two straight days. By Saturday, whole park benches were under 2 feet (61 cm) — single-storm snow totals that haven’t been registered in the city for at least 50 years, likely longer as current records (used by rt.com) only date back to 1973.
The conditions, dubbed as “Snow Apocalypse” by many online publications, resulted in the majority of closure of roads across the city.
“It’s a real snowstorm, a snow Armageddon, a snow apocalypse,” said Fobo’s Evgeny Tishkovets when speaking to the state-run RIA news agency.
“This is not a practice alert, but a combat alert,” he continued.
Around 60,000 people were working to clear the streets over the weekend, the Moscow mayor’s office said.
The city’s key Ring Road was clogged with heavy trucks, which traffic managing to move barely a few feet an hour:
The historic snow also led to multiple injuries due to collapsing roofs:
MANITOBA SETS 20+ NEW COLD RECORDS ON SATURDAY (IN BOOKS DATING BACK TO 1879)
Canada has seen a host of low temperatures shattered this winter — and on Saturday alone, the extreme cold set more than 20 new lows in Manitoba.
While temperatures for this time of year should be hovering around –20C (-4F), the mercury in Winnipeg plunged to a historic -38.8C (-38F), according to Environment Canada data — a reading which busted the previous all-time record set in 1879 (solar minimum of cycle 12) by a full degree C.
Shoal Lake annihilated its all-time record low from 1970 by over six degrees C, while Norway House hit a new low of -44.4C (-48F) — breaking its previous record by five degrees C and making it the coldest place in Manitoba, said Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Luzny.
“We’re actually breaking records almost every day,” Luzny said. “Quite a few long-standing records and quite a few records broken by a wide margin.”
Luzny added that the neighboring province Saskatchewan also managed to break 17 cold-weather records on Saturday, with both Saskatchewan and Manitoba remaining under “extreme cold weather warnings.”
CARS BURIED UNDER SNOWDRIFTS IN BRITAIN
Last week, the UK recorded its coldest temperature since 1995 (solar minimum of cycle 22) and its lowest February reading since 1955 (solar minimum of cycle 18) when -23C (-9.4F) descended.
During the bout of polar cold, tens of weather stations across the country also set new all-time February lows.
Weather warnings for snow and ice continued through the weekend, too — and on Saturday night, and as reported by the BBC, cars were buried under “huge banks of drifting muddy snow” in the Scottish burgh of Buckie:
Snowplows attempted to clear the stretch of road but were unable to make it through — a story repeated up and down the UK during this winters record breaking blast of cold and snow.
Snowplows worked overnight Saturday to clear the A96.
WRAP UP NORTH AMERICA
One final note…
An intense continent-spanning and long-lasting Arctic blast is currently gripping Canada, the United States and Mexico (and is forecast to last into March!):
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